A dormitory door at Villanova is unlocked with an app. “If you had asked me four years ago
if my smartphone would have been able to open a door, I would have told you no,”
says a university official. “Technology is changing, and it’s changing fast.” – Chronicle of Higher Ed

Mark Makela for The Chronicle

By Megan O’Neil

Kathy Gallagher, director of university card systems at Villanova University, was out to dinner one rainy autumn night in 2012 when she received a telephone call from a priest on the staff of the Roman Catholic university. He had gone out to his car to retrieve something only to find himself locked out of a corridor leading to his dormitory room. Campus security was not immediately available.

Instead of prematurely abandoning her meal, Ms. Gallagher pulled out her iPad and opened the door remotely, thanks to a newly tested online system for building access. The next day, she visited the priest’s office to tutor him in a feature that gives employees and students access to given doors using their mobile devices.

Two years later, says Ms. Gallagher, “he loves it. He says to me, ‘Kathy, one thing I always have with me is my cellphone.’ ”

The changes under way at Villanova—it is now installing the online system in all of its residence halls in a multiyear approach—are emblematic of a technology-fueled shift in how colleges are investing in building access and security.

The iPhone of a student at Villanova U. displays an app that lets a user open a specific set of doors on the campus. The university is installing the system in all of its residence halls.

Spurred by a desire to better control who is moving in and out of campus facilities, colleges are adopting sophisticated online access systems at a steady clip. The systems, which support arrays of hard-wired and wireless locks, are being applied to interior doors, such as those in residence halls and labs, in addition to exterior doors. In some places they are being installed in concert with other security features, like video surveillance technology. The migration is such that traditional keys on college campuses could soon become as quaint as typewriters.

Companies competing in the market include the Cbord Group, Heartland Campus Solutions, and Salto Systems.

Online building-access systems deliver a certain “wow” factor. They allow administrators to monitor and control individual doors using a dedicated workstation or browser-based interface. User-friendly features include doors that can be unlocked by contactless “tap” cards and mobile devices.

Read Winkelman, vice president of sales at Cbord, says about 75 colleges and universities use at least one company product controlling access via a mobile device. “It is definitely accelerating,” he says.

The new access systems are also streamlining labor-intensive campus operations, including moving students between dorm rooms and accommodating temporary guests. “You are not handing out keys to summer-conference people who are here for just a few days and they lose the keys,” says Matthew Frericks, senior director for auxiliary planning and facilities at Miami University of Ohio, which put an online system into three dozen residence halls in 2011. “It is just like a hotel. At the end of their stay, that card is deactivated.”

Northeastern University was using traditional metal keys for about half its dorm rooms, with an offline access system—using swipe cards that communicate only with designated locks—for the rest three years ago, when officials there began looking into alternatives. This summer the university will install about 2,400 online locks in its residential facilities, in addition to 4,000 locks installed last year.

The new system allows students to unlock their doors with either cards or mobile devices. Students who do not own smartphones can still unlock their doors by texting “unlock mydoor” to a designated number.

“We do have about 1,000 students who have downloaded the app, and we would like to see that double or triple,” says Marina Macomber, assistant vice president for student and administrative services. “We think it is definitely meeting students where they are at in terms of using their smartphones for as much as they possibly can.”

Northeastern’s online system eliminates the hassle and the risk involved in issuing and collecting traditional room keys, Ms. Macomber says. And it eliminates the liability of a master key, the loss of which can require the rekeying of scores of doors. Resident advisers now can request temporary access in order to let a student into his or her room. A student moving to a new room can be granted temporary access to both the old and the new one.

Similarly, maintenance workers can be granted temporary access to complete work. A student is notified in real time by text message or email that someone will be entering the dorm room.

The cost of online systems varies widely, depending on scale and existing infrastructure. Installing hard-wired locks can run as much as $5,000 per door, according to security consultants. In some cases, existing doors can’t support wireless locks and have to be replaced.

Other Challenges

Some of the wireless locks can be unsightly, making them less appealing to institutions with historic buildings or distinct architecture, says Jeffrey Kernohan, a regional manager at Guidepost Solutions, a company that consults on campus security.

And the batteries for wireless locks have to be monitored and replaced, with heavily trafficked doors requiring the most attention.

Still, controlling access to specific facilities is a high priority. Online systems provide an extra layer of accountability at a time when campus safety is making national headlines.

Eliminating traditional locks means students no longer keep doors open by engaging deadbolts or other means, college officials say. Alarms and alerts are triggered if a door is ajar. Officials at Miami say dorm-room thefts have been “virtually nonexistent” since the locks were installed. Online systems also create a record of every entry and exit, data that can be used in the case of an emergency.

“If you know who is going into a dorm room and you have an emergency egress, you can print out a report and say these are all the people who were in our dorm, and we want to check them all in when they come out to their muster points,” says Mr. Kernohan.

Data generated by the new systems are treated like any other sensitive student and employee information, officials say. The information is accessible to just a few designated people and only for very specific purposes.

The technology used to control building access on campuses could move well beyond standard, credential-based systems. Mr. Kernohan says he sees some institutions with big-budget athletics departments investing in biometric systems, which use fingerprints or handprints to grant access to athletics facilities. Such systems are already widely used by professional sports franchises, he says.

Others say they expect such technology to be used only sparingly. What is clear, they agree, is that the days of the traditional lock and key are done.

“If you had asked me four years ago if my smartphone would have been able to open a door, I would have told you no,” says Villanova’s Ms. Gallagher. “Technology is changing, and it’s changing fast. If you ask me, Five years from now, what we are going to be doing?, I wouldn’t be able to tell you.”

Like this:

JOURNALISTS, as 2013 ended, were busy declaring the death of MOOCs, more formally known as massive open online courses. Silicon Valley startup Udacity, one of the first to offer the free Web-based college classes, had just announced its pivot to vocational training — a sure sign to some that this much-hyped revolution in higher education had failed. The collective sigh of relief from more traditional colleges and universities was audible.

The news, however, must have also had the companies that had enthusiastically jumped on the MOOC train feeling a bit like Mark Twain. When newspapers confused Twain for his ailing cousin, the writer famously quipped, “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” Undoubtedly pronouncements over MOOCs’ demise are likewise premature. And their potential to disrupt — on price, technology, even pedagogy — in a long-stagnant industry is only just beginning to be seen.

Tuition costs have been ballooning faster than general inflation and even faster than health care. And what do we get in return? Nearly half of all bachelor’s-degree holders do not find employment or are underemployed upon graduation. At the same time, employers have not been satisfied with degree candidates. Two recent Gallup polls showed that although 96 percent of chief academic officers believe they’re doing a good job of preparing students for employment, only 11 percent of business leaders agree that graduates have the requisite skills for success in the workforce. And this is all occurring while higher education leaders were convinced that they were innovating all along.

It was just the wrong kind of innovation.

Any industry has both sustaining and disruptive innovations. Most people are very familiar with the former, which are meant to drive up prices by delivering bigger, faster, stronger products and services for the best customers. Disruption, on the other hand, changes the nature of performance itself, usually driving down prices. Together, these two vectors keep costs in line.

Higher education, however, has historically seen only sustaining innovations. To outpace fellow institutions in the game of college rankings, schools have improved classrooms, updated technology, sponsored faculty research, increased administrative overhead, and decked out residence halls and dining facilities. Costs have spiraled out of control.

To exacerbate matters, the US government has put a floor — not a ceiling — on prices. Through policy and increased Pell grants and other subsidized loans, the government has only enabled people to afford the costs rather than incentivizing institutions to make the cost of education more affordable to people.

Fortunately, though, the mania around MOOCs jump-started several meaningful conversations in the opposite direction.

The online offerings have already had enormous power in revealing the kind of pricing the higher education market can actually bear. In a world where there has been no incentive to reduce costs, the mere existence and potential of alternatives has forced established institutions to move on price. In 2013, we witnessed aggressive discounting strategies as well as schools experimenting with lowering net — not sticker — prices in an effort to recruit students. Without even competing directly as true low-cost substitutes, MOOCs have managed to generate price competition previously unheard of among traditional campuses.

At the same time, MOOCs called into question our basic assumptions about college. Free access to content from prestigious institutions revealed that content didn’t need to be proprietary. Without having to waste time re-creating the same lectures and class materials, particularly for lower-division courses, many professors saw the opportunity to be even more connected and hands-on in order to make existing content come alive for students. Despite the intense trepidation that technology would somehow replace teachers, it became clear that MOOCs didn’t preempt interaction; instead, they forced more contact and accountability on both the student and the teacher.

Faculty have also been forced to reassess how and why they teach the way they do. Some professors began experimenting with alternative models, such as flipped classrooms and other blended-learning techniques by taking advantage of readily available, open, online materials.

Yet there is plenty of room for more change to come.

Udacity, for its part, should be applauded for not burning through all of its money in pursuit of the wrong strategy. The company realized — and publicly acknowledged — that its future lay on a different path than it had originally anticipated. Indeed, Udacity’s pivot may have even prevented a MOOC bubble from bursting.

Oddly, bubbles occur when too many people are too right about the potential of something like MOOCs. The personal computer bubble of 1984 and the dot-com bubble from 1999 to 2002 epitomize what’s known as “capital market myopia,” when investors ignore the logical implications of their individual investments in the same business category. MOOCs could have easily fallen into a similar trap — it’s difficult to imagine all the organizations receiving the enormous, collective investment in online learning ultimately succeeding.

In all likelihood, companies like Coursera and Udacity — Harvard and MIT’s offering, edX, operates as a nonprofit — that started out as MOOC providers will eventually move away from certain qualities of the unfortunate acronym. “Massive” and “open” are not particularly conducive to viable or sustainable business models. They may, in fact, become even more of a menace to traditional higher education as they pivot. It won’t be long before these companies find their emergent strategies. Traditional institutions certainly cannot afford to stand still.

Academics have historically separated teaching and scholarship as a distinct enterprise from vocational training. Utility was what graduate and professional schools were for, whereas college was the space and time for students to pursue their passions and gain a global perspective.

This approach, however, unwittingly ignores a very vital niche of students — non-consumers of traditional education. Or, in this case, the nearly 80 percent of college-goers in the United States who don’t have the residential-college experience we tend to glorify. Most commute, work part-time, have family commitments, or don’t have the luxury to major in a field with no direct relevance to their future career goals. The amenities, socialization, and services bundled together by most brick-and-mortar institutions have little relevance to these students.

Education technology companies and alternative learning providers — not just MOOCs — are finding disruptive footholds by targeting these non-consumers. They note that graduates from even well regarded colleges are struggling to launch their careers, make it into the workforce, or transition between jobs. Innovators are, therefore, beginning to address this widening gap by identifying what employers need and building those skill sets into their curricula.

Many colleges and universities resist the idea of training students for jobs. Yet it is employers who are truly the ultimate consumers of degree-holders. If alternative education providers, by partnering or collaborating with employers, are able to deliver prospective job candidates who are as just as qualified — and in some cases, better suited — for the opportunities at hand, companies will begin to validate these learning pathways.

In our research, we see over and over again that it is nearly impossible for established leaders to disrupt themselves. So what does that mean in practical terms for more traditional colleges? Some will have to accept they can’t be everything to everyone and scale back their course offerings. Academic leaders, no longer able to count on state or federal subsidies, will have to bear down on the inefficiencies built into how they now operate. Not every campus will be able to be a research institution. Tenure will be called into question.

Over time, colleges and universities will have to compete with providers who offer low-cost, direct paths to employment that do not necessarily end in degrees or certificates. Campuses will have to be clear about the value of a college degree. Students and families will demand a more precise understanding of what they can expect from their college degree. And that will benefit all learners.